Ogre

This creature’s python-thick apish arms and stumpy legs conspire to drag its dirty knuckles through the wet grass and mud. The stooped giant blinks its dim eyes and an excess of soupy drool spills over its bulbous lips. Its misshapen features resemble a man’s face rendered in watercolor, then distorted by a careless splash. It snarls as it charges, a sound the offspring of bear and man might make, showing flat black teeth well suited for grinding bones to paste.

Before Combat Ogres rarely lay ambushes, and when they do, it’s not so much because they are crafty as because they are lazy. If they can kill a man with a well-thrown javelin, they don’t have to fight or chase him down.

During Combat Once battle is joined, ogres wade into the thick of melee, swinging their clubs at any target that presents itself.

Morale When their prey turns out to be more dangerous than they thought, the rare moment of good sense seizes ogres; they flee if reduced to less than 5 hp.

Stories are told of ogres—horrendous stories of brutality and savagery, cannibalism and torture. Of rape and dismemberment, necrophilia, incest, mutilation, and all manners of hideous murder. Those who have not encountered ogres know the stories as warnings. Those who have survived such encounters know these tales to be tame compared to the truth.

An ogre revels in the misery of others. When smaller races aren’t available to crush between meaty fists or defile in blood-red lusts of violence, they turn to each other for entertainment. Nothing is taboo in ogre society. One would think that, left to themselves, an ogre tribe would quickly tear itself apart, with only the strongest surviving in the end—yet if there is one thing ogres respect, it is family.

Ogre tribes are known as families, and many of their deformities and hideous features arise from the common practice of incest. The leader of a tribe is most often the father of the tribe, although in some cases a particularly violent or domineering ogress claims the title of mother. Ogre tribes bicker among themselves, a trait that thankfully keeps them busy and turned against each other rather than neighboring races. Yet time and again, a particularly violent and feared patriarch rises among the ogres, one capable of gathering multiple families under his command.

Regions inhabited by ogres are dreary, ugly places, for these giants dwell in squalor and see little need to live in harmony with their environment. The borderland between civilization and ogre territory is a desperate realm of outcasts and despair, for here dwell the ogrekin, the deformed offspring and results of frequent ogre raids against the lands of the smaller folk.

Ogre games are violent and cruel, and victims they use for entertainment are lucky if they die the first day. Ogres’ cruel senses of humor are the only way their crude minds show any spark of creativity, and the tools and methods of torture ogres devise are always nightmarish.

An ogre’s great strength and lack of imagination makes it particularly suited for heavy labor, such as mining, forging, and clearing land, and more powerful giants (particularly hill giants and stone giants) often subjugate ogre families to serve them in such regards.

Ogre Variants

Pickin (CR +0)

Pickin ogres grow tall and lean like dead trees, and their fingers end in bony protrusions. They have thick, bark-like skin and spiked growths all over their bodies, and their hands end in sharp, thorn-like claws.

Shaggra (CR +1)

Shaggras are a bizarre band of forest-dwelling ogres covered in dark fur that reeks of musk. Their long, matted fur has a freakish life of its own, undulating and even grabbing at enemies. They have stunted legs and massive, over-sized arms, similar to apes. They move on all fours and smash enemies with their giant fists.

Degenerate Ogres

Other tribes inbreed with such tenacity and enthusiasm that their already fragile gene pool buckles under the strain. Over time, these degenerate ogres turn feral, go blind, and develop grossly bulging limbs and chests.